Rockfish Friday and Sat.

[SEAWOLFF]

Left Windmill at 12:30 Friday wind was up so we stayed in the river. We just wanted to try our new planer boards and experiment with this new (to us) technique. We managed a 12 rod spread off a 23' boat with no incidents. In 3 hours of fishing we pulled in 3 fish 24" - 32" between Mosqiuto Point and the Rapp. Bridge. Saturday morning the wind was screaming so we stayed in the river and caught a couple more. Around 1:00 the wind dropped out and we headed to 59A seas were less than a foot. This time we set out a 16 rod spread and managed to catch 12 fish 32" - 40". Four of the fish were over 37". All fish were caught heading against the tide. Umbrellas and dbl. bucktail rigs, 9"white and chartruese baits in 48" to 60' of water. The fish seemed to be mid to high in the water collumn. Only one fish was hooked on deep mojo it seemed big but pulled off before we got a look. Of course all of the fish were released. The fish are there go out and get them.

[Kevin Smith]

Impressive spreads by far!!! Glad you got out and found 'em!!

Kevin
Weekend Mistress

[satterly]

Good to hear there are some fish in the river. I may try to get out there on Tuesday or Wednesday evening after work. How much of a headache is it running the planers? Not interested in running quite as impressive of numbers as you but would like to increase the spread abit this year.

--John

[rappangler]

SeaWolff,

Good report, glad you got out. I was out in the river on Sat and it was blowing. We did a couple of drifts across the oyster beds but were moving too fast for the croaker. We did manage dinner.

I thought about pulling a little lead, now you are going to make me do it. That is a lot of lines out on that size of boat in rough water. A birdsnest waiting to happen.

Rappangler

[SEAWOLFF]

I should have added that on Saturday when we pulled the 16 lines we were on a 36' cat but they were the same set of planner boards and I am sure we could do it on the smaller boat with calm seas. Satterly, we had very little trouble with the boards and lines, however everybody on board were very experienced fishermen. None of us had tried this technique before so we had alot of discussion before we gave it a try. Logic told us to run lighter and longer lines furthest out and shorter heavier lines closer to the boat. When a fish hits the line it naturally swings straight off the stern and you bring him right up the center. Because we had our lines at different lengths and depths we could pull all the lines tight to the boat if we needed to reset one of the longer lines. It takes alot of concentration (or good notes)
but it works sweet. Remember this is technique can only be used in seas less than 2 ft. and in wide open areas. We estimated our spread covered a 150 - 200 ft. swath. Hope this helps.